First time I ran into him, Saturday, we were up in the corner of the Eastern Plague Lands. At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary. Your run-of-the-mill Orc Hunter.

But the “BOT!” tell tales just screamed out. His pet owl was named, “Owl.” And he ignored everything, working on undead. He targeted me for a bit, just standing there, and then moved on.

Where his behavious screamed BOT was that he ignored attacking mobs, why not, he’s got a pet, and attempted to mine my thorium vein. Mine because I just happened to mining it at the moment.

Classic Bot, so I added him to my friends list. I use FriendswithBenefits so my Friends list is copied to all my other characters of that faction on the server. Anyway, Boyblue, not his real name, is literally on-line from 4 a.m., server time, to 4 p.m. server time. I see him Sunday morning when I log on in the morning to look for Thorium, and in the afternoon when I play a little, and at night, when I’m questing in the Outlands. Saturday he spent the entire time in the Eastern Plague land, and Sunday he’s all over the map. The entire time he’s level 60 so his player has not purchased the expansion.

Sunday, I’m ahead of him. Six arcane crystals already, and I’ve got stacks and stacks of Thorium in the bank building up for the big push to Blacksmithing 300. I’ve got plans to make 4 entire sets of Imperial Plate (480 some Thorium, 48 rugged leather, 4 star rubies) 1) to level up my blacksmithing, and 2) prepare some equipment for Honorus, Halcyon, Freewind, and Winkydink.

So there I was, in that little ravine with the slimes. I’m mining my Rich Thorium vein. Two loots and a slime attacks. I’m standing on this vein, fighting a slime, and this Boyblue shows up. And starts hacking. A new slime approaches and attacks him. My slime dead I resume mining. He frost traps his slime and proceeds to start mining.

Obviously a bot. Or an asshat.

I get the last of the Thorium and mount up and ride out. I see him ride out too.

So I figure, clever me, I’ll follow the Bot and see what he’s up to. Obviously this thing is programmed with vein refresh timers so I’m sure he’s got a route planned out. So I follow him, and sure enough, he’s heading to the next vein I know about. (Cartographer Mining ftw!) The vein is gone, probably due to me, so we continue on.

Then we get to Hearthglen. That’s the elite Crusader camp there in the corner. And he dismounts and starts attacking a guard. Hmm. I’d never ventured in. But if it’s worth this effort to him, it must be a bonanza inside. So I ride past, 4 more levels than him allowing me to aggro less.

Not a vein inside and I barely make it back out alive. But I do live.

And then I see it. In the chat box.

I got myself ROFLPWNED! The guy played me like a cheap record. I got owned!

In chat, very cute, “Blueboy waves farewell to you.” Son of a biscuit! He lured me into Hearthglen, and I took it, hook, line, and sinker! ROFL!

He certainly pulled one over on me.

But, it also means this was not a bot.

This is a live player, with brains, who does nothing but farm mineral nodes across Azeroth. (I later noted him in the Barrens, Winterspring, Burning Steppes.) He does nothing but farm, and plays round the clock, and does not own the expansion. He’s certainly not funding a main, or a twink, since he’s got no time. And it’s a live player since he played that little trick on me.

Later, I was in the Burning Steppes, looking for Thorium. At one of the veins, there’s this, level, yep, 60, warrior in, yep, crap gear, mining it. 60, crap gear, Bot. So when he’s done and mounts up, I do too. And I follow him, figuring I’d check out it’s programming.

That is until it stopped, targeted me for a bit, untargeted me, rode on, me on his heels, targeted me, and then spit on me.

Tsk, tsk.

I returned with him to the Alliance flightpoint and we parted ways.

Apparently not bots. Apparently rude farmers.

Is it me, but wouldn’t a level 70 farmer, with lower aggro range, be better able to quickly make money?

And could someone claim that they 1) enjoy farming minerals to sell in the auction house, and 2) enjoy it to the exclusion of all other activity. I guess so. Sad life though.

Because this weekend I had Msaker help out a few folks in Hillsbrad, sent Darbanville with Zauberin to STV. Had Blackhoof start on the Ogres in Blades Edge, rescuing some troll trapped in a pile of poo. Msaker probably farmed 120 thorium and 7 arcane crystals. And Sunstriker and Halcyon travelled to Stonetalon Peak for a change of pace.

5 Responses to

Interesting story! My guess is that you’re following live gold-seller farmers. It’s not often that I run into a case of a person trying to steal a node I’m mining.

Likely they are only 60 (base accounts) to limit losses if the accounts are banned — I would guess that means that the Outland doesn’t enhance gold profits enough to merit the risk of purchasing the BC. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they took advantage of the 10-day free trial of the BC.

And yes, being level 70 is the way to farm Thorium. My Blacksmithing was stuck at 272 before the expansion, and after hitting 70 I went back and farmed Thorium for Blacksmithing, coming up with a route in Silithus that included the bug tunnels (better be able to handle 2-3 elite bugs at once) and a roving cross-country route. I could pull in 25 Thorium per round, but then had to wait for ore respawn. I never ran across competition on my server, and in the run to 300 Blacksmithing only had an ore node stolen once (ironically, deep in a bug tunnel of all places!) It would be rather lucrative, but also gets painfully boring after a while. I don’t want the epic flying mount quite that badly, yet.

Don’t let that trick fool you, I still think that it could be a bot. Asian’s MMORPG are fill with bots. I’ve seen bots that auto answer tells, some of them the live person is watching what’s going on and he can chat through the bot program (this is because GM bans you if they send you a tell and you don’t answer while playing and moving) I’m sure that’s not the case here in WOW, but if bot can identify and target a mob, i’m sure it can target you and do an emote… If you’ve played korean’s MMORPG, you’ll see far more intelligence bot than the ones in WOW. Way to detect a bot is to begin a conversation with a little more complex topic because saying hi/how are you? back could very well still be a bot ;p

Great story, and sad, sad idividuals. It takes a really weird person to want to pay $15/mo to just farm.

I can only think of one instance where that is the only thing you do: ever need something crafted like a Lionheart Helm or the equally massive leggings? It took me forever to buy the Arcane Crystals to transmute, so if I were farming for those crystals, I’d have been that sad, sad individual out there farming mining nodes.

I’d rather farm greens and blues and play the AH. I wish there was an Easy Button for gathering profs.

*cackle* I’ve never actually run into a bot from what I know, but I also don’t really pay much attention to others around me, and I tend to play at times where the population is low and there’s minimal competition for what I’m doing.

Of course, mining is somewhat different – there’s always competition for that. And yes, my 53 Warr is a blacksmith too, and she’s stuck at 270 or something like that, slowly but surely mining enough thorium to advance.